primary care

June 23, 2019

Advances and Push Back on WHO Traditional and Complementary Medicine Initiatives

The recent 72nd World Health Assembly – the May 2019 edition of WHO’s annual global health gathering in Geneva – offered unusually powerful windows into the advances of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine (TCIM) internationally. A WHO progress report detailed the expanding regulatory context for traditional medicine practice. Exemplar nations participated in a TCIM briefing session (all presentations available publicly). In parallel, the approval of a separate WHO initiative, long in development, to include Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) codes in the 11th version of WHO’s international classification of diseases (ICD-11) received major push back.
June 4, 2019

For the Americas: PAHO’s Nation-by-Nation Network and Resource for Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine

In the United States, the complementary and integrative medicine dialogue about “traditional medicine” typically looks to Asia. The West-meets-East orientation respects the power and influence of Chinese and Indian traditions. Yet in doing so, both local indigenous practices and the roles of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine (TCIM) in Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean are mostly overlooked.  The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) recently created a partial remedy for this hemispheric forgetfulness.  A two-year collaborative process with representatives of over 20 nations has created a powerful network and opened access to a nation-by-nation bounty of practices, papers, research, and regulations.